Quotes from Jodi Picoult

I smiled at him as best I could and pushed the paper across the table before he could change his mind. Because Henry DeVille was correct - there was an ingredient in my baking more concenctrated than any extract, more pungent than any spice; an ingredient that everyone would recognize and no one was able to name: it was regret, and it rose when one least expected.

believe me, you're all I've thought about -- At this, I grin.

When they laugh, it sounds like confetti.

Things don't always look as they seem.

Where is the line between keeping something private, and being dishonest?

I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.

Who would have imagine that the sound your life made as it disintegrated was total silence?

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

I could think whatever I wanted to, but realized that any promises I made myself were destined to be broken.

The problem was, you couldn't have one without the other. There couldn't be a bad guy unless there was a good guy to create the standard. And there couldn't be a good guy until a bad guy showed just how far off the path he might stray.

What's shocking to you isn't that the justice system is flawed, Olivia. It's that you were naïve enough to believe all this time that it wasn't.

How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.

Because the more you changed, the less of you there was.

As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.

There is something bleak and barren about a world that is missing the person who knows you best.

Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can't figure out what to hold on to.

Where did you go? To the end of the driveway, my mother says. I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out. I wince. Do you have to be quite so graphic? What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room?

because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.

Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.

But here's the truth: no matter how much you might wish for it, princes don't come around every day, and happy endings don't grow on trees. Take it from me: the sooner you grow up, the less you'll be disappointed.

Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers.

No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.

Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.

How far can a person go... and still live with himself.